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No, the palm of wintry beauty must assuredly be given to the English Midlands the Midlands with their stolid and richly variegated woodlands, and their pretty undulating meadows, clad in fleecy garments of the purest, softest, and most glittering snow. It was a typical Midland Christmas when I got to Northampton and took my place in the luxurious closed carriage Achrow had sent to meet me.
"Lady Kirlby gave me a pitying look, but it was of no avail; the word of our hostess was paramount, and I did not learn what was in store for me until it was too late to retreat. At half-past eleven William Achrow turned out the gas, and when we were all seated round the fire, he suggested we should each relate in turn, the most thrilling ghost tale we had ever heard.
"That the room was genuinely haunted I had not now the slightest doubt, for the atmosphere was charged to the very utmost with superphysical impressions the impressions of a monstrous hearse, with all the sickly paraphernalia of black flowing drapery and scented pine wood. "I was annoyed with William Achrow. I had wanted to see him; I had wanted to meet the Kirlbys; but a ghost no!
"Relighting my candle and shutting the window Achrow is one of those open-air fiends who never had a bronchial cold in his life, and expects everyone else to be equally immune I found myself in a room that was well calculated to strike even the most hardened ghost-hunter with awe. "It was coffin-shaped, large, narrow, and lofty; and floor, panelling, and furniture were of the blackest oak.
"I did not tell Achrow what I had experienced, but expressed, instead, the greatest astonishment that anyone should have thought the room was haunted. 'Haunted indeed! I said. 'Nonsense! If anything haunts it, it is the ghost of some philanthropist, for I never slept sounder in my life.
"'When I tell you that Sir Charles and Lady Kirlby are coming, and that we can offer you something startling in the way of a ghost, you will, I know, need no further inducement to join our party. Yours, etc., "Achrow was a cunning fellow; he knew I would go a thousand miles to meet the Kirlbys, who had been my greatest friends in Ireland, and that ghosts invariably drew me like magnets.
"Killington Grange," near Northampton, was once haunted, so my friend Mr Pope informs me, by a chair, and the following is Mr Pope's own experience of the hauntings, as nearly as possible as he related it to me: "Some years ago, shortly before Christmas, I received an invitation from my old friend, William Achrow. "'Killington Grange, 'Northampton.
William, however, informs me that there is a ghost here he has, of course, told you. "But at this very psychological moment Mrs Achrow interrupted: 'Now, no secrets, you two, she said laughingly, leaning over the back of the divan and tapping Lady Kirlby playfully on the arm. 'There must be no mention of ghosts till it is close on bedtime, and the lights are low.
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